A clever push out of Y&R Dubai for Gulf News is a simple lesson for the local marketing industry about “bastard ideas”, and how they can have a real impact, or so says Clemenger BBDO executive creative director Paul Nagy.
In the clip below, you can see how the brand combined “fresh coffee” with “fresh news” to create a simple but effective “bastard idea”, which has been “born without obvious marketing parents”.
Nagy said: “Okay, a ‘headline news cup sleeve’ is not the most revolutionary promotional campaign I’ve ever seen, but this idea from Y&R Dubai for Gulf News does highlight this exciting new era of advertising we’ve moved into.
“Teaming up with global coffee chain, Tim Hortons, Y&R developed a machine that prints headlines from the newspaper's Twitter feed onto coffee cup sleeves every hour. A QR code accompanies the headline so customers can scan it to read the full article on the Gulf News website.
“Fresh coffee. Fresh news. It’s a beautifully simple way to add value to one product while promoting another.
“It’s yet another example of these fantastic ‘bastard ideas’ born without obvious marketing parents. It’s not print or TV. It doesn’t come under the ubiquitous banner of digital. It’s more than just media-neutral and doesn’t even naturally fit into the interactive gene pool.
“More and more in my own creative department, the best ideas are not merely media-neutral, but in fact deliver a solution outside the specialisations of any common advertising discipline. Product ideas. Sales channel revolutions. Content generation. We’re even in the process of launching a whole new business for one of our clients in answer to a common marketing challenge.
“The industry has been grappling with this trend for a while now (along with the ability to properly monetise our ever-slippery Intellectual Property), but the reality is, in the best scenarios, creative departments are starting to be used as think tanks for a limitless range of business problems.
“A solution with no obvious parents … who ever imagined being called a bastard could be so exciting, eh?”
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